Poem 39

Someone waking after – or during – an operation … two realities, you can be carried along with the anaesthetic hallucination or transcribe the clues as to what’s really happening …

… I loved The Flintstones as a kid, the Weirdly Gruesomes were their next door neighbours …

( … dog barking like a telephone ringing – that’s good … )

Pethidine

In the clean kiss of a morning
cold and thin as alcohol
I wake up in my hospital bed under a tree
nearby sounds of chooks scratching
a dog barking like a telephone
ringing
branches bend down to my abdomen
sun glinting at their tips
like a scalpel
far out I think
weirdly gruesome
feeling leaves tighten inside me
making adjustments prising out
and apart
like the broken wall my mother predicted
when I showed her where I planted the acorn